4 ms·

That's a great argument for selling drives, not for locking your devices down to practically require them

by franga2000 2y ago

formerly_proven 2y ago
For a BYOD product it would be fine to add a blacklist of DM-SMR drives imho. Or have a big red banner and a taint flag. But that's not what Synology did. Also, if the image on the Synology page is accurate, they are relabeled Toshiba drives. Which doesn't really seem a good choice for SMB/SOHO NAS devices, because the Toshiba "Machine Gun" MGxx drives are the loudest drives on the market.
- sersi 2y ago
  I had some 12TB WD ultrastar that I happily replaced with some Toshiba MG09ACA18TE. To my ears at least the toshiba sound signficantly more bearable than the ultrastar were (lower pitch so less disturbing). Due to living in a small apartment my NAS is in my living room so noise matters. That said, I've since added an ssd and moved almost everything to the ssd (docker, the database and all apps) and it's much nicer in term of noise.
- numpad0 2y ago
  It can't be programmatically identified because manufacturers actively hide them. There are ATA commands for that, DM-SMR drives lie to it. I wouldn't be sure why Toshiba M-prefixed 7K2 drives would be bad for NAS use cases. They're descendants of what were used in high performance SPARC servers. Hot, dense, obnoxious, but that's just Fujitsu. They're plenty reliable, performant, and perfect for your all-important on-line/near-line data! You just have to look away from bills(/s). 0: https://www.techpowerup.com/265841/some-western-digital-wd-red-hdds-allegedly-use-smr-a-big-nono-for-nas-and-raid https://www.techpowerup.com/265841/some-western-digital-wd-r... 1: https://www.techpowerup.com/265889/seagate-guilty-of-undisclosed-smr-on-certain-internal-hard-drive-models-too-report https://www.techpowerup.com/265889/seagate-guilty-of-undiscl... 2: https://www.smartmontools.org/ticket/1313 https://www.smartmontools.org/ticket/1313
- m000 2y ago
  TBF, the picture in TFA only shows rack-mounted Synology devices, where noise is not really a concern. Synologoy SMB/SOHO NAS devices should not be affected by the drive lockdown (for now).
  - Heliosmaster 2y ago
    but that's the proposed change, that their Plus lineup which is generally targeted for SMB/SOHO/enthusiast market, will be working only with their drives
    - m000 2y ago
      Then the photo with the U-factor servers is obvs. a distraction. Thanks for the clarification.
  - sokoloff 2y ago
    Per the article, it’s all “Plus” models from 2025 on, which definitely includes desktop 2-8 bay units. I have been a happy enough Synology user since 2014, even though I had to hardware repair my main DS1815+ twice in that time (Intel CPU bug and ATX power-on transistor replacement). Other than two hardware failures in 10 years (not good), the experience was great, including two easy storage expansions and the replacement of one failed drive. These were all BYOD, and the current drives are shucked WD reds with a white sticker (still CMR). I happily recommended them prior to this change and now will have to recommend against.
    - Melatonic 2y ago
      So basically buy one of the older models now ? Will new firmware updates to everything before this require the Synology branded drives ?
      - sokoloff 2y ago
        Seemingly not, at least not for the moment, based on the experiences of people migrating arrays [successfully] from older units and the massive backlash that would result if they trashed currently working arrays. If you’re going to buy a DSM unit, I’d definitely buy a 2024 or earlier model. But even as an overall happy user under their old go-to-market approach, I can’t recommend them now.
spease 2y ago
> That's a great argument for selling drives, not for locking your devices down to practically require them The counterargument is, people won’t listen and then blame Synology when their data is affected. At which point it may be too late for anything but attempting data recovery. Sufficiently nontechnical users may blame the visible product (the NAS) even if the issue is some nuance to the parts choice made by a tech friend to keep it within their budget. Synology is seen as the premium choice in the consumer NAS argument, so vertically integrating and charging a premium to guarantee “it just works” is not unprecedented. There are definitely other NAS options as well, if someone is willing to take on more responsibility for understanding the tech.
- yurishimo 2y ago
  I don’t think anyone would care if Synology gave priority to their own drives. A checkbox during setup that says “Yes, I know I’m using these drives that have not been validated blah blah blah” would be plenty. That’s not what Synology did however and that’s the main reason everyone is pissed.
  - netruk44 2y ago
    Funny you mention that… I have a DS1515+ which has an SSD cache function that uses a whitelisted set of known good drives that function well. If you plug in a non whitelisted ssd and try to use it as a cache, it pops up a stern warning about potential data loss due to unsupported drives with a checkbox to acknowledge that you’re okay with the risk. So…there’s really no excuse why they couldn’t have done this for regular drives.
    - spease 2y ago
      That assumes that the person setting up the NAS is the same person using it, which is not going to be the case for non-tech-savvy users. Everyone will understand it costing more, fewer people will understand why the NAS ate their data without the warning it was supposed to provide, because cheap drives that didn’t support certain metrics were used. If Synology wants to have there be only one way that the device behaves, they have to put constraints on the hardware.

That's a great argument for selling drives, not for locking your devices down to practically require them

For a BYOD product it would be fine to add a blacklist of DM-SMR drives imho. Or have a big red banner and a taint flag. But that's not what Synology did. Also, if the image on the Synology page is accurate, they are relabeled Toshiba drives. Which doesn't really seem a good choice for SMB/SOHO NAS devices, because the Toshiba "Machine Gun" MGxx drives are the loudest drives on the market.

sersi 2y ago
I had some 12TB WD ultrastar that I happily replaced with some Toshiba MG09ACA18TE. To my ears at least the toshiba sound signficantly more bearable than the ultrastar were (lower pitch so less disturbing). Due to living in a small apartment my NAS is in my living room so noise matters. That said, I've since added an ssd and moved almost everything to the ssd (docker, the database and all apps) and it's much nicer in term of noise.
numpad0 2y ago
It can't be programmatically identified because manufacturers actively hide them. There are ATA commands for that, DM-SMR drives lie to it. I wouldn't be sure why Toshiba M-prefixed 7K2 drives would be bad for NAS use cases. They're descendants of what were used in high performance SPARC servers. Hot, dense, obnoxious, but that's just Fujitsu. They're plenty reliable, performant, and perfect for your all-important on-line/near-line data! You just have to look away from bills(/s). 0: https://www.techpowerup.com/265841/some-western-digital-wd-red-hdds-allegedly-use-smr-a-big-nono-for-nas-and-raid https://www.techpowerup.com/265841/some-western-digital-wd-r... 1: https://www.techpowerup.com/265889/seagate-guilty-of-undisclosed-smr-on-certain-internal-hard-drive-models-too-report https://www.techpowerup.com/265889/seagate-guilty-of-undiscl... 2: https://www.smartmontools.org/ticket/1313 https://www.smartmontools.org/ticket/1313
m000 2y ago
TBF, the picture in TFA only shows rack-mounted Synology devices, where noise is not really a concern. Synologoy SMB/SOHO NAS devices should not be affected by the drive lockdown (for now).
- Heliosmaster 2y ago
  but that's the proposed change, that their Plus lineup which is generally targeted for SMB/SOHO/enthusiast market, will be working only with their drives
  - m000 2y ago
    Then the photo with the U-factor servers is obvs. a distraction. Thanks for the clarification.
- sokoloff 2y ago
  Per the article, it’s all “Plus” models from 2025 on, which definitely includes desktop 2-8 bay units. I have been a happy enough Synology user since 2014, even though I had to hardware repair my main DS1815+ twice in that time (Intel CPU bug and ATX power-on transistor replacement). Other than two hardware failures in 10 years (not good), the experience was great, including two easy storage expansions and the replacement of one failed drive. These were all BYOD, and the current drives are shucked WD reds with a white sticker (still CMR). I happily recommended them prior to this change and now will have to recommend against.
  - Melatonic 2y ago
    So basically buy one of the older models now ? Will new firmware updates to everything before this require the Synology branded drives ?
    - sokoloff 2y ago
      Seemingly not, at least not for the moment, based on the experiences of people migrating arrays [successfully] from older units and the massive backlash that would result if they trashed currently working arrays. If you’re going to buy a DSM unit, I’d definitely buy a 2024 or earlier model. But even as an overall happy user under their old go-to-market approach, I can’t recommend them now.

spease 2y ago

> That's a great argument for selling drives, not for locking your devices down to practically require them The counterargument is, people won’t listen and then blame Synology when their data is affected. At which point it may be too late for anything but attempting data recovery. Sufficiently nontechnical users may blame the visible product (the NAS) even if the issue is some nuance to the parts choice made by a tech friend to keep it within their budget. Synology is seen as the premium choice in the consumer NAS argument, so vertically integrating and charging a premium to guarantee “it just works” is not unprecedented. There are definitely other NAS options as well, if someone is willing to take on more responsibility for understanding the tech.

yurishimo 2y ago
I don’t think anyone would care if Synology gave priority to their own drives. A checkbox during setup that says “Yes, I know I’m using these drives that have not been validated blah blah blah” would be plenty. That’s not what Synology did however and that’s the main reason everyone is pissed.
- netruk44 2y ago
  Funny you mention that… I have a DS1515+ which has an SSD cache function that uses a whitelisted set of known good drives that function well. If you plug in a non whitelisted ssd and try to use it as a cache, it pops up a stern warning about potential data loss due to unsupported drives with a checkbox to acknowledge that you’re okay with the risk. So…there’s really no excuse why they couldn’t have done this for regular drives.
  - spease 2y ago
    That assumes that the person setting up the NAS is the same person using it, which is not going to be the case for non-tech-savvy users. Everyone will understand it costing more, fewer people will understand why the NAS ate their data without the warning it was supposed to provide, because cheap drives that didn’t support certain metrics were used. If Synology wants to have there be only one way that the device behaves, they have to put constraints on the hardware.